Steel-cool 'Robocop' Is The Limo Lawmen

Max Headroom meets Mad Max in RoboCop, a to-the-max action picture that blends the disturbing humor and narrative daring of the former with the comic- book violence and frenetic visuals of the latter.

This combination will undoubtedly be too strong for many viewers -- too frenetic, too violent, too daring, too disturbing, too something. But if you're in the market for state-of-the-art thrills, RoboCop is the film to see.

Set 15 minutes into the future (about five minutes before Max Headroom, in other words), the movie tells the story of a cop named Murphy who gets blown away by a gang of punks. Actually, he doesn't get blown entirely away. There's enough life left in Murphy's bullet-riddled carcass for the superscientists of Security Concepts Inc. to turn him into a cyborg.

Once the half-man/half-machine is programmed, he (it?) sets about cleaning up Detroit. Being only human, so to speak, RoboCop places a special emphasis on bringing Murphy's attackers to justice. And as things turns out, the trail leads straight to the highest levels of the company that ''created'' our hero in the first place.

The simplest way to enjoy RoboCop is on the level of its action sequences, which include just about every sort of violence you can imagine and a few you probably can't. Director Paul Verhoeven has flair for slick, rapid imagery, and an instinct for setting up highly charged confrontations.

Most importantly, he gives the action scenes a crucial, crazy twist that allows them to be both shocking and witty. It doesn't make a lot of sense to complain about the gratuitousness of the violence in a movie like this because, as in the Mad Max pictures, the gratuitousness is part of the joke.

The joke -- which is to say, the film's satiric perspective -- extends far beyond the scenes of violence. Even the choice of setting is ironic: Where better than the Motor City to tell a tale of a man who becomes part machine?

And as in Max Headroom (or last year's Aliens), corporate America is the target of many amusing speculations about the near future.

We see, for example, that stock-market figures will one day flash above the urinals of executive washrooms. Also, some day, there will be a Lee Iacocca Elementary School. The ultimate corporate joke comes near the end of the movie when, after an executive is terminated in the occupational sense, RoboCop terminates him in the Terminator sense.

In case you wonder how RoboCop turned out so much better than its dumbo title would lead you to expect, the answer most likely lies in the intelligence and audacity of the director. Paul Verhoeven is a Dutch filmmaker known for such critically acclaimed films as Spetters, a harsh look at Holland's teen-agers; The 4th Man, a psychological thriller involving a bisexual love triangle; and Soldier of Orange, a WWII drama about the Dutch Resistance.

On the basis of these films, one might hazard a guess that sci-fi violence isn't exactly Verhoeven's cup of tea. But if the new film isn't truly a personal project (as the futuristic/

satiric Brazil was), the director seems to have been challenged by the pulpy material, to have determined to somehow make it his own. And, working from a script by newcomers Michael Miner and Edward Neumeier, he has done it. Not only is there a satiric charge to his movie, there's also something intriguingly grim about it. Verhoeven keeps us caring about the struggle within the cyborg, the tension between flesh and metal. And no matter how zany the mood gets, the director never quite lets us forget the character's tragic dimension.

There are, to be sure, limitations to this sort of movie. Even as you enjoy it, you have to acknowledge that, finally, it doesn't get beyond its pulpiness. And RoboCop isn't a film in which performances count for a lot. Peter Weller is effective as Murphy and RoboCop, Nancy Allen is amusing as Murphy's partner, Ronny Cox and Miguel Ferrer make good, slimy villains, and Kurtwood Smith is superb as a sadistic killer. But their work as actors isn't really what sticks in your mind.

What you remember most vividly is the dark figure of the cyborg crusader, a cop with a face more dispassionate than that of Dirty Harry or Joe Friday. His eyes, obscured by a forbidding visor, are eloquent in their remoteness. And when he speaks, he's right to the point: ''Come quietly,'' he tells a villain, ''or there will be slight pause trouble.''

Like the tormented figure at its center, this movie combines the mechanical with the human. And though much of the film is made up of spare parts from cop shows, exploitation flicks and comic books, it nevertheless comes to life. RoboCop taps into something powerful beneath the debris of popular culture. Its hero is a newfangled Frankenstein for an age of high-tech pop.